The diamond seems to have been known from the most remote period of antiquity. We find it was associated along with the emerald and the sapphire in the second row of the twelve precious stones on which the names of the children of Israel were engraved, ” every one with his name according to the twelve tribes,” and these were set in the breastplate of judgment worn by the High Priest. What the Urim and Thummim (Urim, Lights. Thummim, Perfections) were, which also adorned the breastplate, when he went into the ” holy of holies,” we have now no accurate means of ascertaining, but as the terms imply what is luminous and perfect, it is by no means unlikely that these were diamonds of great beauty and splendour, which reflected the glories of the symbol of the Divine Presence.
Thus we know distinct names were given to the two pillars that were reared in the porch of the temple at Jerusalem ; and the two chief diamonds belonging to Persia are hyperbolically termed, in the language of the east, ” the Sea of Glory,” and ” the Mountain of Splendour.”
The ancients seem to have been well acquainted with the use of the diamond in etching, and it is even stated that the figure of Mars, or of Hercules surmounting the Hydra, was engraved on it. The diadem, which is more ancient than the crown, was not worn until after Constantine, in the lower empire. This was a fillet, tied in a knot behind, and adorned with pearls and diamonds, either in a single or, a double row, which empresses were also permitted to wear. The diadem thus decorated may be observed on some of the coins of Constantine and Jovian.
There is in the British Museum an ancient Roman gold ring, with an octahedral diamond set in it: and in the clasp of the mantle of Charlemagne, still preserved at Paris, there are four diamonds, natural crystals. It was sometimes considered a talisman, and when under the planet Mars, esteemed favourable.
In former times it was supposed to cure insanity, and to be an antidote to poisons; notwithstanding which, Paracelsus was said to have been poisoned by diamond powder :* we believe it to be as inert in the one case as it is harmless in the other.
The Greeks called this gem “unconquerable” and AdaMant was given to it in consequence of this suppositious virtue, in that it was esteemed victorious over fire, and to resist the hardest things.
Ancient Greek writers describe it as only found in Ethiopia, between the island Meroe and the temple of Mercury. The notions of the ancients about it seem to be altogether confused and indistinct.
According to Pliny, there existed between the diamond and the magnet a natural antipathy. ” There is,” says he, ” such a disagreement between a diamond and a loadstone, that it will not suffer the iron to be attracted ; or if the loadstone be put to it and take hold of it, it will pull it away.”-)
- It is needless to observe, no such antipathy can now be discovered in the case; and if the grand test of inductive truth, ” experimentum fiat,” had been then applied, it would, like the witty monarch’s problem propounded to the Royal Society, have been found an equally gratuitous assumption. We, at least, have found no diminution of the attractive powers of the magnet, when we interposed between a magnet and a fine needle no less than five fragments of diamond.
